Remember the late '70s ballet movie "The Turning Point"? It starred
Mikhail Baryshnikov
as a womanizing danseur out to tempt a budding ballerina, and it entranced a generation of little girls dreaming of toe shoes and tutus.

But every fantasy has a backstory. You might also remember Gelsey Kirkland, the New York City Ballet wunderkind who chronicled her spectacular talent for self-sabotage in her memoir, "Dancing on My Grave." She would have acted opposite Baryshnikov had she not driven herself into a full-blown breakdown and withdrawn just before the film's production. Instead, we dance lovers must formulate our "what ifs." And here's a new one to ponder: What if "The Turning Point" had been written with Gelsey Kirkland herself as the main character? It would have looked a lot like Adrienne Sharp's new novel, "First Love," a compulsively readable, occasionally silly and undeniably juicy portrayal of offstage life during the "ballet boom."

Sharp, a former dance student of some seriousness, has depicted this world before, in her short-story collection "White Swan, Black Swan." This time she goes right for 20th century ballet's venerated giant, New York City Ballet founder George Balanchine. "First Love" is built on an audacious premise: What if Balanchine, who died in 1983, had found one last muse? Defenders of the Balanchine faith need not work themselves into a tizzy. "Mr. B," as he was known, comes off like a saint. It's the novel's main character, the naive woman plucked by Balanchine to star in his long-dreamed-of staging of "Sleeping Beauty," who steadily loses the reader's respect.

Here's the setup: It's 1981, and Sandra Ellis is 20 years old and languishing in the back row of the corps de ballet. Her boyfriend, Adam, is a rising sex symbol dancing across Lincoln Center Plaza with American Ballet Theatre. They've just consummated their love when Sandra catches Balanchine's eye, and the choreographer's attentions come at a price: Adam's jealousy.

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Meanwhile, Sandra's historian father (her mother is dead) has been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. Adam's surrogate father, the wealthy patron of a modern dance company, is ailing from a mysterious syndrome the world will soon know as AIDS. And of course, Balanchine himself is dying of another not-yet-recognized cause: Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease. Turmoil, indeed. And yet Sandra and Adam bring much of it upon themselves. They scream, they self-mutilate, they take a pharmacy's worth of drugs, they try to kill themselves. Adam at least shows a head for decision-making; Sandra is so helpless that at times you want to kick her tiny, ballet-chiseled butt.

No one would accuse Sharp of sanitizing the glamour days of ballet-mania, and she paints the scene with tantalizing true-life detail. Rudolf Nureyev and Suzanne Farrell flit through as minor characters, along with a "Who's Who" of other illustrious dancers. Balanchine is seen creating his masterpiece "Mozartiana" and rehearsing "Diamonds." And there is tantalizing of a different variety: Adam and Sandra are young and horny, and Sharp renders their adventurous erotic encounters in breathlessly naughty prose that may make some readers turn a bit warm and others laugh out loud.

She uses her conceit well. The story enters Balanchine's point of view (believably) just a few, judicious times. The plot zips along on Sharp's lyrical writing style, and emotionality rises like steam off the page. The metaphorical possibilities of "Sleeping Beauty" are artfully explored, an emblem of awakening, hope and every fairy tale's dark side. And yet even Aurora, asleep for 100 years, would seem to take more responsibility for her fate than our heroine, Sandra, does.

She's only 20, of course, and it's true enough that the ballet world encourages its share of infantilism, though the scene is also populated by many emotionally secure, perfectly self-possessed young women. The question is not whether Sandra makes a good poster girl for women in ballet but whether her character serves the deepening of Sharp's story and whether Sharp's authorial stance seems to romanticize her implosion. And though it's impossible to turn away from the train wreck Sandra makes of her distressing situation, it's hard to know by the end what she's learned about those lofty- sounding things like the human condition, or what the reader has.

"First Love" courts comparison with another ballet narrative story capturing the same era, Toni Bentley's short but piercing memoir, "Winter Season." Like Sandra, Bentley has her moments of masochism -- don't we all? -- but her journal, recorded near the end of Balanchine's life, is full of intelligence and resolve. It's the book to turn to if you want to think seriously about the sacrifices required by this most unforgiving of artistic vocations. For high drama and steamy sex delivered with craft, take "First Love" to the beach.